No Sugar Added

I’ve been enjoying the incredibly delicious first fruits of my Alpine strawberry plant this week (read that link for an excellent article about them). These wild strawberries are smaller than the regular type of strawberries you buy in the store, and have a more intense and more interesting flavour. They are difficult to breed and scale for commercial purposes, and thus rarely sold in stores.

I had never heard of Alpine strawberries and — until I bought the plant — I had no idea there even were any other types of strawberries besides the mainstream ones. They are an ancient delicacy that survived into our modern world of industrial agriculture like relics by growing in the quiet corners of people’s gardens.

In Egypt, there is a beautiful church in Old Cairo known as the Hanging Church, or El Muallaqa in Arabic. Leaving the pervasively Islamic environment of Cairo and entering such a beautiful, sacred, Christian site feels like traveling in time, a dissident act of allegiance to the world of a bygone era. Eating these strawberries gives you a similar feeling.

I’ve been growing the plant for 4-5 weeks now, and the fruits are just coming online, although I hear it will keep fruiting for a long while. As part of my adventures in urban food gardening, I’m also growing some basil, garlic, and a tomato. This definitely proves that anyone can grow at least something, because I live in an urban area and have no outside space–this is all going on in (somewhat) sunny corners of my apartment.